"Through the Szombat gate."
The youth immediately turned his horse's head, and beckoned to his comrades to follow him.
But at the first words he had uttered, a figure enwrapped in a mantle had emerged from a corner of the gate, and when he began to talk about the Princess and the firman, this figure, with great adroitness, had crept quite close to him, and when he turned round had swiftly followed him till, having made its way through the throng, it overtook him, and, placing its hand on the horseman's knee, said in a low voice: "Tököly!"
"Hush!" hissed the horseman, with an involuntary start, and bending his head so that he might look into the face of his interlocutor, whereupon his wonder was mingled with terror, and throwing himself back in his saddle, he exclaimed: "Prince! can it be you?"
For Prince Ghyka stood before him.
"Could I be anywhere else when they want to kill my wife?" he said mournfully.
"Do not be cast down, there will be plenty of time till to-morrow morning. I have plenty of confidence in my good star. When I really wish for a thing I generally get it even if the Devil stand in the opposite camp against me, and never have I wished for anything so much as to save Mariska."
The Prince, with tears in his eyes, pressed the hand of the youth, and did not take it at all amiss of him that he called his wife Mariska.
"Well, of course, you have brought the firman with you, and if you come with the suite of the Sultan——"
"Firman, my friend? I have not brought a bit of a firman with me, and those who are with me are my good kinsfolk in Turkish costumes, worthy Magyar chums everyone of them, who have agreed to help me through with whatsoever I take it into my head to set about; but I have got something about me which can make firmans and athnamés, and whatever else I may require, whether it be the key of a dungeon, or a marshal's bâton, or a prince's sceptre—a golden knapsack, I mean."